‘As to their political principles, I think them, from their system of parity, and from their practice in most parts of Europe, infinitely more favourable to political liberty than ours.
‘Witness Germany and Switzerland and the short reign of Old Nol.
‘You say, “But their political principles never became powerfully active without involving their country in a civil war.” And are there not two words to that bargain, and does not the pot call the kettle, &c. &c.?[[95]] You might as well object the same to all good citizens when oppressed by bad ones; you may as well object the same to the first Brutus and to the second; you may as well object it to Luther and Melanchthon. Did the Presbyterians ask anything unreasonable when they desired to have their nonsense tolerated as well as other nonsense? for if it be nonsense ’tis paying it too great a compliment, and ourselves too bad a one, to persecute it; and if it be good sense, surely, for one’s own sake, as well as that of our neighbours, it deserves a better reception than persecution.
‘When I see Switzerland and Germany pacified for above 150 years, after throat-cutting for 140, by the single means of a reciprocal toleration, and by the Pacta Conventa of 1648,[[96]] which allowed them to share those loaves and fishes alternately monopolised by each party, I must confess, if I were Frederick the First of Oceana, or of Atlantis, I should not hesitate to begin my reign with that system with which most sovereigns are compelled to close theirs! The rights of humanity, dear Arthur, the rights of humanity form a great article in my creed, and that religion, or sect of religion, which can teach otherwise may come from below, but surely did not descend from above.
‘Believe me, our whirlwind is not past, perhaps ’tis only just beginning; yet three hundred labourers with their spades fill my mind’s eye with as pleasing and as satisfactory ideas as the whole Coleraine Battalion with their muskets before my door. If in this whirlwind I can direct the storm, so much the better for humanity, but not for the lank-haired Divinity, nor the frizzle-topped Divinity, nor the hocus-pocus Divinity.
‘I love agriculture because it makes good citizens, good husbands, good fathers, good children; because it does not leave a man time to plunder his neighbour, and because by its plenty it bereaves him of the temptation; and I hate an aristocratical Government because it plunders these honest fellows; because it is idle; it is insolent; it values itself on the merits of it, and because, like an overbearing torrent, the farther it is removed from its fountain head, and the less it partakes of its original purity, the more desolation it carries with it; and because, like a stinking, stagnated pool, it inflicts those very disorders which it was the chief merit of its spring and fountain head to heal and remove.
‘Adieu.
‘Ever affectionately,
‘Bristol.’
My brother, the Rev. Dr. Young, Fellow of Eton College, in this letter informs me that the King reads my ‘Annals’ and is much pleased with them, and highly approves of my arguments to show that we are far enough from being in a ruined state.